


(Feel the Waves) Getting Started

by Gorgeous Nerd (gorgeousnerd)



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Agoraphobia, Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 19:16:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16980249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgeousnerd/pseuds/Gorgeous%20Nerd
Summary: Wolves are made to run. And run Louis did.





	(Feel the Waves) Getting Started

**Author's Note:**

> This wasn't my original story for this fest; I have a huge outline for a Louis/Niall story that I would very much like to finish later. This is a prologue to that story. More content notes than the tags at the end of the story, and the title, naturally, comes from One Direction's Wolves.

“Who’s _that_?”

Louis stopped in his tracks.

Harry Styles had a beautiful flat in London. Louis would know where it was exactly in London if he ever left, but ever since he’d moved in a year ago—“Need someone to look after it while I’m touring,” Harry said, with those irresistible puppy eyes of his—he only left when Harry dragged him out. Or Liam, who he’d met on X Factor and immediately hated because he was another werewolf doing X Factor and was a better singer and more handsome than Louis to boot, but had grown to some weary fondness.

Fuck, how had it been a whole year already.

He’d had plans once. Ambitions. But he’d fallen ill in Spain in the way only half-werewolves did: intensely and life-threateningly for no reason beyond the fact that you were part human and part wolf. He hadn’t gotten a chance to get through Judges’ House; he was lucky he hadn’t died, and that he’d only been in the hospital until the X Factor finale. The fact that he’d come out of the experience with two good mates was probably all the luck he was going to get for a lifetime.

He should be grateful he was alive. And he was. But translating that into action was…hard. He didn’t feel like anybody should understand, but they did. His mum did, Harry did, and Liam did. They tried to get him out to doctors every six months or so, and patiently waited out Louis’s panic attacks, but no doctor knew how to treat a head case that was also a half-werewolf. There were resources for humans, and werewolves. The science wasn’t there for anyone else, and liability made everyone too afraid to try.

So there Louis was, stood in stained joggers in the middle of an incredible flat with industry people on the couches and having no clue what the fuck he was doing, living with famous touring pop star Harry Styles.

Harry smiled and waved at Louis. “My roommate! Lou, come sit, we’re talking about my next music video.”

In the past, Louis…well, he wouldn’t be _here_. But if he had been, he would have grinned and hopped over the couch and charmed the pants out of everyone. He would have ruffled Harry’s growing curls and talked up his best mate in the whole world. He could have at least managed a witty quip about how he couldn’t right now because he was…too fit or something.

But he couldn’t manage a smile. Or words. He could barely manage to stumble backward.

Harry was perfect, though. Harry was always fucking perfect.

“Oh yes,” he said, standing and answering some unspoken prompt of Louis’s. “I did want to look at the ceiling in your room before we started, didn’t I? Sorry, I forgot. This’ll take five minutes, excuse me.”

And Harry, grinning the whole time, took Louis by the arm and steered him into Louis’s room.

Louis’s legs crumbled the second his bedroom door was closed. Harry managed to get him to the bed.

“Inhale,” Harry said soothingly.

Louis ripped his arm out of Harry’s grip. He raised shaking hands to his face.

“Fives, remember.” Harry, being Harry, had found time to consult with a therapist even while being a multiplatinum, touring success, so he had more coping skills than Louis did. “Five in. Five hold. Five out. Ready? I’ll do it with you.”

Louis hated it. All of it. He hated that Harry knew what to do when Louis didn’t, he hated that Harry was so good at working him through it, and he hated that the breathing was fucking working, even though his eyes were welling up.

But he relaxed, and when he was obviously back to himself, he pushed back his hair and said, “Shit.”

“Sorry. This is my fault.”

Louis’s hand froze in his fringe. “What?”

“I didn’t think you’d be awake for a couple more hours, or I would have warned you I was having a meeting at home. It didn’t need to get to this point.” Harry was rubbing Louis’s arm comfortingly.

“You should be able to have your career and not have to babysit someone completely mental—“

“Hey.” Harry’s tone was friendly, but firm. “No talking about my best mate like that.”

“But it’s true, isn’t it? I’m an adult. I should be able to handle strangers.” Louis exhaled a shaky breath. Since the adrenaline was leaving his system, he was getting tired. “You should go back to your meeting.”

“I can reschedule.”

“You don’t need to. Just…” He waved a hand.

Harry didn’t look convinced, but he got to his feet. “Got my phone, so if you need anything…”

“Yeah, yeah. Go.”

-

Louis’s mum called him a couple days after.

“Why don’t you come for a visit, love?” He could easily hear the havoc his sisters were wreaking on the other side of the phone, and he let himself pine for a moment. “You haven’t been since last Christmas. Could make a couple weeks of it.”

Harry’s hand was obviously in on this, but Louis was at the point where he couldn’t bring himself to care about meddling. Being home with the pack sounded perfect.

“When do you want me?” he asked.

“Whenever.”

It had been Louis’s intention to get the train—just because his best friend was a rich popstar didn’t mean he wanted to take full advantage of his wealth—but Harry asked a very practical question.

“Do you think you could get on the train?”

Really, it was more generous than Louis deserved. “Can you get out the front door” was a better question. The answer was yes, but only as a wolf, and he didn’t want to go out in London as a wolf. It’s not like werewolves were unheard of, but city wolves never walked the streets in their fur. He would be too exposed as a human and too obvious as a wolf.

When Louis didn’t answer Harry’s question, Harry asked, “Can I hire you a car? You could go in the middle of the night, never have to see anyone.”

Louis shook his head immediately.

“I’d drive you, but I have more meetings.”

That brought an option to mind.

-

It turned out Liam Payne, despite his cheerful friendliness, was content to sing quietly to himself all the way to Doncaster and leave Louis alone to sleep in the back seat as a wolf. Despite the fact they left at a godawful hour.

He greeted Louis’s mum in his usual cheerful way even though the time they arrived was just about as godawful, with the sun only just starting to rise. Mum had met Liam during Louis’s long hospitalization, and she invited him to eat breakfast with the pack. It was noisy chaos, but Louis stayed as a wolf and curled up at Mum’s feet, and he felt more right than he had in weeks.

-

What hadn’t occurred to Louis was how close it was to Christmas when his mum called, and, correspondingly, how close it was to his birthday. Mum had gone out of her way not to mention any of it.

She did a cake and everything on Christmas Eve, like she always did, and Louis humoured her by changing back to human and forcing a smile and trying to remember how to use his human fingers to open presents. He got through the main show before the panic crept in. His sisters pressing in and yelling in his ears had never left him so squirrely in the past. He’d only associated fairy lights with happiness and cheer.

At first opportunity, he slipped out the back and stretched his wolf legs again.

Doncaster wasn’t quite rural, but it also wasn’t London. Run the right ways, and there was nature, farmland, preserves. Once Louis made it out past the houses, he felt like he could breathe again. He just had to worry about farmers that might mistake him for an actual predator, and the odd arsehole who saw werewolves as an opportunity for a good fight. Neither were hard to avoid.

“Don’t worry, love,” his mum had always told him when he’d been a pup, and they’d been about to go out in their furs. “Wolves are made to run.”

And run Louis did.

-

When Louis next saw Harry, it wasn’t in the fields. Nor was it at his mum’s house—which, Louis was loathe to admit, wasn’t his home anymore—or in London.

It was in an abandoned house just outside of town. It had been one of Louis’s favourite spots, after he’d left hospital and right before Harry had asked him to move in. The walls were crumbling, and he could see hints of stars overhead, but it was still mostly intact.

Inside while being outside. Only Louis could find that kind of loophole.

He smelled Harry before Harry’s timid knock at the front door. Louis ruffled his fur and huffed as Harry came inside.

“Your mum told me where you were,” Harry said unnecessarily. Of course Mum knew Louis’s spots. He hadn’t seen her in days, but he’d smelled her on the packages of food she left out front. “Can we talk?”

If Louis had any manners, he’d turn human again. He was too tired for manners. He grunted quietly.

Harry took that as acquiescence and kicked away a pile of rubble next to Louis’s den. The den was, of course, an old sofa left in the house that smelled of mildew and wet. Harry didn’t take a spot on the sofa; he opted for the floor instead.

“Thought we were supposed to party at the new year,” Harry said, his voice as Harry as ever: deep, slow, friendly.

Oh. They had talked about throwing a New Year’s party. Louis had forgotten. He also hadn’t realized New Year’s Eve had come and gone, but it made sense when he thought about it.

Louis was such a shit friend.

Harry curled one of his hands in Louis’s fur. He had never been scared of Louis as a wolf. When Louis had changed for the first time at X Factor, to show off, Harry had been leaning against him, and he never flinched. When Louis had been in hospital, Harry had snuck out of the house to come sleep with him and the pack to help him heal.

Louis shifted and sighed. There was a time he loved attention. Loved to talk and sing. He hadn’t even sung with his pack since...well, before X Factor.

“Can I show you something?” Harry asked.

Louis rumbled in agreement.

Harry pulled out his phone and swiped through pictures of a shopfront. It appeared to have been closed for a while, but Liam was standing there, beaming with his arms extended in one picture. Then with his face in a mock growl and his fingers curled.

“Me lawyers suggested I invest in some property as a way to...I don’t know, it’s all complicated finance...legal...stuff. I need you to come back to London to help me run it.”

For a moment, Louis was baffled. What could Harry possibly be...

But then he remembered.

When Louis had first moved in, and Harry had been just about to start production on his second album, they’d had Liam and Lottie over for a housewarming, and Louis had been delightfully drunk, and he’d rambled happily for most of the night about how great it would be if humans could have packs when they couldn’t sleep or they were ill. Like a cat café, but for wolves and humans. And insomnia.

“A wolf café,” Liam had chimed in, and everyone had cheered.

The next morning, Louis hadn’t been hungover, but Harry had been. Louis made him a proper greasy English breakfast and made sure he was well-hydrated, and Harry, groaning beneath a pillow, had mumbled about how he’d finance the café when the album started to sell. Louis had patted his hand and gone for the paracetamol.

On his sofa, Louis popped back to human. Harry’s hands, small in Louis’s fur, were huge in Louis’s hair.

“You bought the wolf café,” he said, eyes wide.

“I did,” Harry said. “And I want you to come run it.”

Louis was so tired. Being human just reminded him how tired he was. It was probably the sensible thing to do to tell Harry that he couldn’t, to retreat to Donny, to live his life in his fur in the wild as much as possible. However long that would be.

But if he was never going to get better, that sounded like misery. More misery than he already experienced, anyway.

Louis leaned into Harry. Harry was solid against him.

“I want to hire Liam,” Louis said. “And Lottie.”

Harry moved his hand from Louis’s hair to his back. “Sounds perfect.”

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes: Includes ableist language and references to past medical trauma.


End file.
